BDS Movement Just Delivered A HAMMER BLOW To Israel’s Economy!

Right, so if there is one surefire way to really hit Israel where it hurts at the moment, it’s taking shots at it’s economy, which has for months been suffering from loss of investment, multibillion dollar deals falling through, not to mention the bulk of it’s trade, not with it’s neighbours who it is at war with most of them, is with nations further afield, Israel reliant on sea trade for that and the interruption to it’s shipping and shipping routes, most notably courtesy of the Houthis in Yemen is taking a toll.
On top of that we’ve now just witnessed one of the biggest impacts courtesy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions carried out against Israel, certainly by a Western nation at that and given the body involved here is one of the biggest investment funds on the planet, the knock on effect to other investors, who don’t want to have their own business sullied by association with Israeli atrocities across the Middle East, may follow suit here too.
Right, so bad economic news for Israel, as yet again they take a hit in the pocket, which these days is the most surefire way of making them go ouch, I’m waiting to be honest to see how long it is before investors taking their money away and reinvesting elsewhere start to be called antisemitic for refusing to do business with the genocidal apartheid state, but when Israel’s own people are moving their money out of the country, from savings to pensions, it doesn’t exactly come across as a place where investing large amounts of cash seems like a promising idea for big returns.
Once again this is being hailed as a big success story for the global Boycott, Divestment & sanctions Movement, BDS, as the worlds largest sovereign wealth fund, so we’re talking a state owned investment company, has pulled of all of it’s investments in Israel’s Telecoms giant Bezeq.
Now it was only the other day that I made mention of Bezeq in another video, as they are actually implicated in one of the three corruption cases being brought against Benjamin Netanyahu, something he was supposed to be in court for on Monday, but having pleaded safety concerns, got himself an 8 day extension, so this coming Tuesday as things stand, will now see him in the dock.
The case in question is called Case 4000 and is the biggest of the three corruption cases in terms of potential prison time for Netanyahu as in this case Netanyahu is accused of trying to negotiate positive coverage for himself and his wife, by offering regulatory favours to Israel’s biggest Telecommunications company, Bezeq Telecom Israel to give it its full name and to do so via a news website controlled by the Chairman of Bezeq Telecom. This case carries charges of breach of trust and fraud, but also bribery, which could collective in this case alone amount to a possible prison sentence of more than ten years.
The Sovereign Wealth Fund in question here, the largest in the world belongs to Norway, and it holds assets amounting to some $1.8tn, they literally own 1.5% of all shares that there are in the world, belonging to some 8700 companies, so the fact such a fund has rid itself of any ties to Bezeq is notable, because we’re not talking pocket change here even if the percentages seem rather small.
Norway has actually been getting rid of it’s Bezeq shares all year long, this hasn’t been a new move by them. Back in January they owned 2.2% of all of Bezeq Communication Israel’s shares, but by June, that had gone down to 0.76%, down by almost two thirds. That in itself though equated to some $22.8m worth of shares they still had, so they started out with some $66m worth of investment in Bezeq. Huge amount of money, but you might be thinking, that’s just a drop in the ocean for Bezeq surely? They might grump, but surely it doesn’t amount to catastrophe given only a relatively small proportion of their shares are affected. Well, they care. They’ve been trying for months to dissuade Norge Bank, who manage this sovereign wealth fund, from divesting, but to no avail, as this excerpt from Israeli news outlet Globes implies:
‘Israeli telecommunications company Bezeq tried for several months to prevent Norway’s sovereign wealth fund from disinvesting from it, with political and business arguments that in the end were not accepted. This week, the fund published its decision to sell its $24 million holding in the company (0.76% of it) because of ethical considerations, on the grounds that the company assists in the breach of international law through the services it provides to West Bank settlements and to the IDF…
The value of the fund at the date of its last quarterly report was $1.8 trillion, and it has as one of its goals to manage an ethical investment portfolio in accordance with criteria set by a special Council on Ethics.
In June, Bezeq wrote to the fund that it operated directly under section 36 of the third annex to the Oslo Accords, which determines that "telecommunications services in Area C to settlements and military bases… will be the responsibility of the Israeli side." It also made clear that it had a legal obligation to provide telecommunications services to West Bank settlements and could not avoid doing so.
All these clarifications were not enough for the Council on Ethics, which determined that, through the services that it provided to the settlements and to the IDF, the company assisted in a breach of international law. It found that telecommunications, like roads and water supplies, were part of the infrastructure of the Israeli occupation. It also ruled out the use of the Oslo Accords, and, in making clear why Bezeq was in breach of international law, rested its decision on the interpretation of the International Court of Justice concerning the illegality of the Israeli occupation in the territories. "The Council notes the company’s assertion that it also provides telecom services to Palestinian areas in the West Bank. However, the Council does not consider this to outweigh the fact that the company, through its physical presence and provision of telecom services to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, is helping to facilitate the maintenance and expansion of these settlements, which are illegal under international law. By doing so, the company is itself contributing to the violation of international law," the Council on Ethics states in its decision.’
So because Bezeq supplies telecommunications to the illegal settlements of the West Bank, and the new criteria Norway are following based on the decisions made by Norway’s Council on Ethics – isn’t it nice that their government has such a thing? We could do with one of them, but based on their decision, taking an ethical view of what Israel is doing and it’s companies that Norway invests in, rather than the capitalist way that so much of the West does, they’ve taken the decision to pull out and all despite Bezeq’s protestations that they can’t help it. Well, yes you can, you could have chosen not to invest in the settlements, not to provide infrastructure, someone else might have picked up the slack, you might have lost business, but you would have saved face, and you wouldn’t have lost a major investor.
Now with the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund having taken this change in stance all eyes are now on whether other Israeli investments it still possesses are going to be binned off too. Where Bezeq are the latest in a list of Israeli companies to be divested from by Norway, others including Shapir Engineering, Ashtrom and Danya Cebus, all involved in illegal construction activities within the West Bank, Norway still have investments amounting to some $1.4bn across 76 other Israeli companies. There is every reason given the change in criterion adopted last summer and deferring more stringently to the Council on Ethics opinions that further divestment will happen. The Council on Ethics mooted divesting from all Israeli ties two years ago, due to abuses and building beyond the so called Green Line, the demarcation between Israel and Palestine based on 1949 armistice agreements, and today marks the borders based on those following the 1967 6-day war. Today, well, we’ve 15 months of genocide for the Council on Ethics to consider, especially if they take on board the provisional rulings by the International Court of Justice and Israel are bricking it, that over a billion dollars worth of investments could be flogged off on the cheap in order to get rid of them and these investments include several of their biggest banks, including the First bank of Israel.
This is not just a victory for the BDS movement, but given Norway’s history as a strong advocate for a Palestinian State, they have been supportive of this for a long time, it’s coming at a time where it is coinciding with greater levels of settler rhetoric, with designs on Gaza and intention to impose Israeli sovereignty over what they call Judea and Samaria, the annexation of the West bank as that would be. Even more countries, even more investment funds, would do well to follow suit, because the more who do the right and decent and ethical thing here, the more of a pariah those holding Israeli invest portfolios will become and ultimately the more damaging to Israel’s economy all of this will be, an economy that has already been significantly weakened by their ongoing genocide and has become reliant on outside economic support. The likeliest way the state of Israel will actually fall, would be under the weight of it’s own debt, to send the country bust. Norway are doing the right thing, they have some way to go still, but they’re doing more than many other nations with sovereign wealth funds and they’d do well to take notice.
Meanwhile, as a reminder of why it is so important to defund, boycott, divest and sanction Israel, they’ve easily just committed their most evil act to date in my view and it features very heavily in a brand new 296 page report by Amnesty International, an organisation that has always been cautious regarding the use of the word genocide, but certainly are not any longer. Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch, please support the channel by hitting like, share and subscribe if you haven’t already done so, it’s very much appreciated and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.